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Lawmakers Eye Obama’s Budget

It is budget week on Capitol Hill as President Obama releases his spending blueprint, intensifying the ongoing political battle over fiscal issues.

Trying to show that Democrats are serious about holding down spending, Mr. Obama is expected to on Monday to propose a $3.8 trillion budget that will freeze much domestic spending at current levels and save about $20 billion. The president will even take the scalpel to some programs he favors, like the advance earned income tax credit, to show that favored policies are not exempt from cuts.

Republicans, trying to outmaneuver the White House in the spending war, say the administration must do more.

“I think the president’s proposal on freezing nonsecurity domestic spending is a good first step,” Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press. “But it’s only $15 billion for each of the next three years. I think we can do much better than that. I don’t think any agency of the federal government should be exempt from rooting out wasteful spending or unnecessary spending.”

Mr. Boehner said he would put the Pentagon under tighter spending scrutiny even though the White House has made the military exempt from the freeze. “There’s got to be wasteful spending there, unnecessary spending there,” he said. “It all ought to be eliminated.”

Once the budget is released, senior administration officials will fan out across Capitol Hill to defend their budget proposals to the relevant Congressional committees. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is also expected to discuss in his appearances the White House plan to eliminate “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the military’s policy barring openly gay men and lesbians from serving.

In the Senate, Democratic leaders hope to push ahead later in the week with unveiling a job-creation measure, a welcome shift for Democrats weary of the battle over health care. And the House is expected to send to Mr. Obama a requested increase in the federal debt limit while approving rules on requiring that new spending be offset and not be added to the mounting deficit.

On health care, Democratic leaders would like to reach a conclusion on how to proceed with the troubled legislation in the aftermath of the Massachusetts Senate loss, but it is unclear how quickly they can reach that decision given widespread jitters among lawmakers.

An earlier version of this post erroneously identified the secretary of defense as William Gates.

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